If your piano is new, it should be tuned at least 3 times in the first year. If you buy a new piano from a dealer, they will usually provide you with one complimentary tuning shortly after you receive it. The strings on a new piano need time to stretch and hold their pitch. If more tunings are done when your piano is new, it will maintain its tune for much longer periods of time as it gets older.

You should not let your piano go for longer than one year between tunings. Six months remains the ideal schedule for tuning.

Your piano was built to hold the standard pitch of A-440 and regular tuning maintains this pitch.

There are many different factors that can cause a piano to go out of tune. Here are a few:

1. Playing it: Although it is designed to maintain its pitch while being played, daily playing will cause enough strain on the strings that it will put it out of tune. You may or may not even notice it, which is why it's good to have it tuned every 6 months.

2. Not playing it: Even a piano that sits untouched for periods of time will go out of tune. The piano is built to hold up to 22 tons of tension when all the strings are pulled up to pitch and with this high tension, strings are very susceptible to any slight change in humidity and temperature change.

3. Humidity: As the moisture content in the piano changes from season to season due to humidity, the strings are stretched tighter in a humid environment, or allowed to relax in a drier climate. Humidity control devices on your piano can help decrease this change to the tuning, but a piano will still need regular attention (6 months - 1 year) to maintain proper pitch.

4. Moving a piano: The moving alone will affect the tuning, but also being in a new environment can affect your pianos sound. A store or home from where a piano is purchased can have different temperature or humidity conditions that will affect the tuning. A piano that is just been moved should be allowed to "acclimatize” for a couple weeks. Once the piano is allowed to settle into its new home, it will stabilize and hold a tune much better.

5. Temperature: Just as humidity and dryness affects your pianos tuning, so do warmer and cooler conditions. It is best to situate your piano where it won't be affected by direct sunlight, heat from a fireplace, or vents that can blow cold or warm air. In a newer well built home, putting a piano on an "outside" wall should not be a problem however, with older homes that have little insulation, an inside wall is preferable.

It's best to have your piano tuned when seasonal changes are established.

In many places, this may be difficult to know ahead of time with our unpredictable weather patterns throughout the year. In this case, consistency in when your piano is tuned is also a good guide. For instance, if you have your piano tuned only once a year, make it during the same month each year.

If a piano has gone flat from not being tuned for a long time, your piano should have a pitch raise. This is a "quick" tuning that will bring the pitch back up to A440 which is where a piano should be tuned.

After this, a fine tuning can be done. A pitch raise pulls the strings up to the right tension. In some cases, a piano may need more than one pitch raise before it will hold a fine tune.